Relationships and feelings news from aidsmap

An Australian-based study of gay male couples of opposite HIV
status (serodifferent couples) has so far seen no transmissions from the
HIV-positive partner within the couple in a two-year interim analysis.
The Opposites
Attract study started recruiting in May 2012. ...

Giving both pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and antiretroviral
therapy (ART) to heterosexual
couples where one partner has HIV (serodiscordant couples) can almost eliminate
the chance of infection in the HIV-negative partner, a study presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and ...

A modelling study based on the UK’s HIV epidemic among gay
men estimates that two-thirds of infections originate in men with undiagnosed
HIV, 85% in men who are not taking treatment and 90% within the context of an
ongoing ...

Many young gay men consider ‘safer sex’ to be about more
than condom use, according to a qualitative study conducted in Scotland. Encouragingly,
many consider regular HIV testing to be a component of safer sex. More
problematically, condomless sex ...

Over 40% of women
with recent pregnancy and a third of men with recent partner pregnancy do not
know the HIV infection status of their partner, research conducted in Durban,
South Africa, published in BMC Public
Health shows. Moreover, only ...

A study from Zambia has found that a programme of couples
voluntary counselling and testing (CVCT), in which male/female couples are counselled
together before testing for HIV and again after testing, was more effective in
itself in reducing transmission ...

Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in
Scotland rarely talk explicitly about HIV status with their sexual partners,
but make sexual decisions based on their beliefs about their own HIV status and
that of their ...

Sex with older men is not placing women under 30 at higher
risk of HIV infection in rural South Africa, and relationships with older men
may even be protecting women over 30 from infection, according to results from
a ...

Relationships and feelings news selected from other sources

Use of the internet to meet partners has become so ubiquitous among gay men that comparisons between men who use online dating methods to meet partners and those who do not have become less meaningful.

Terrance Williams's act was profoundly thoughtless, but was it malicious, and should it be considered a crime? And if so, what kind of crime? These questions have been the subject of New York court proceedings for nearly four years. The Williams case is, in a sense, a final vestige of the scariest, most dangerous age of AIDS, when the disease carried a powerful stigma, and an infected body was seen as a dangerous weapon.

If you haven’t had sober sex in the last six months, it hardly makes you a raging drug addict. But intimate sexual connections form a very important part of our general well-being, and if we’re relying too heavily on chems to fulfil those needs, then there’s some kind of problem going on.

Public Health England (PHE) has commissioned The Quest to deliver its flagship “The Quest Workshop”, aimed at reducing health risk behaviour and building resilience, to Black African, Black Caribbean, mixed Black and other ethnicity (BME) gay and bisexual men who have sex with men (MSM). As part of the project, The Quest will be delivering two workshops in London and one in Manchester. The first set of workshops will be taking place in March 2015.

The British Government is considering whether to conduct a study into whether gay or bisexual men in monogamous, same-sex relationships should still have to wait 12 months after having sex to donate blood.

In recent years, two remarkable studies have emerged that provide real solutions for people living with HIV who want to avoid passing the virus on to others. Having grappled with my own HIV diagnosis over the past seven years, there has been something deeply profound and very personal about the findings of both studies. Ever since the HPTN 052 results were released, I’ve often pondered if my transition into living life with HIV might have been less traumatic had I known that treatment would help me avoid passing HIV on to my sexual partners.

NAM’s information is intended to support, rather than replace, consultation with a healthcare professional. Talk to your doctor or another member of your healthcare team for advice tailored to your situation.